"Oh," Andreanna said as I entered, "look. It's the pig girl."
"Sheep," I corrected automatically.
They were all sitting around one of the dining tables—no serving side this time: the queen, Abas, Kenric, two guys I didn't know, and one woman I didn't know. Actually, the woman wasn't sitting at the table; she was sitting on Kenric's lap, though there was plenty of room on the bench, particularly since I'd left Wulfgar behind in Fairfield. She looked like any teenage boy's fantasy: a Barbie-doll figure that defied gravity, a supermodel's face, lustrous black skin, and about fifteen pounds' worth of cornrowed hair fastened off with tiny golden bells. Her outfit was composed exclusively of leather, lace, and strategically placed metal. Wulfgar had said Orielle was better-looking than the other magic-users. I would be willing to bet my college fund that Orielle was better-looking than 99 percent of the world's population.
There was no sign of Sir Deming or Sister Mary Ursula—apparently the queen didn't feel she needed advisers.
"Please send for the royal advisers," I said to the guards.
The queen was making an irritated face, but for once it wasn't about me. "Close the doors, you incompetent fools," she ordered.
I turned and saw that although the guards were tugging on the doors, the doors weren't moving.
The queen sighed.
The page put down his trumpet and joined in the guards' efforts to close the doors. Nothing. Even when all three men concentrated on one door and hurled their weight at it, it wouldn't close.
Don't tell me the castle itself is rebelling against me
, I thought.
"Abas, can't you do something?" the queen said.
"I can do lots of things," Abas protested.
The queen sighed again. "Can't you do something about the door?"
The guards moved out of Abas's way. He pushed. Nothing. He pushed harder. Still nothing. He moved around to the other side and pulled. The doorknobs and the ornate metal plates to which they were attached yanked out of the wood. Abas handed them to the guards, then returned to our side of the doors and once again pushed. I saw the muscles on his arms bulge, the muscles on his back ripple, the muscles on his thighs expand like they were about to pop. There was a creaking noise of wood protesting. Then the huge oaken doors cracked, split, and fell in shards. Without the hinges having budged.
What was going on?
"Well, that was quite useful," Kenric said.
Abas shrugged and returned to the table.
The queen gestured for the guards and the page to leave.
As they picked their way through the pile of splintered wood, the page reached behind him—it must have been mindless force of habit—to pull closed the piece of door that was still attached to the hinges. It swung easily.
The people at the table looked at me suspiciously.
Luckily, with such a limited number of them, they couldn't crowd me out this time. I would have preferred to sit on the same side of the table as the any-other-female-would-feel-like-a-poster-child-for-the-criminally-ugly-compared-to-
her
Orielle, so I wouldn't have to look at her; but she was sitting on Kenric's lap, and he was sitting on Andreanna's left, with Abas having returned to Andreanna's right. If I wanted to sit on that side, I would have had to sit directly next to Orielle. There was a space between the two men who sat on the other side of the table, as well as more room at either end of the bench they shared. I decided on the middle seat, to avoid what might be interpreted as favoritism.
"This," Queen Andreanna said in the same tone someone would use to point out a backed-up toilet, "is Princess Janine. Princess Janine"—she managed to look down her nose even though she wasn't quite feeing me—"these are Orielle, Uldemar, and Xenos."
"Hello," I said to the wizard on my right, Xenos.
He was dressed in a brown monk's robe, with the hood pulled up around his face.
Shy little guy,
I figured. I made a point of smiling at him until he looked up at me. I noticed the pointy, hairy ears about the same time I realized that what he was pulling out of his pocket and popping into his mouth were live centipedes. He glared as though he was sure I was just waiting for the chance to grab his lunch away from him.
I edged toward Uldemar, who announced in a booming voice: "She brings the stench of the dead with her."
Talk about getting personal.
I turned to face him. He was the wizard I'd glimpsed in the coming attraction. I'd noticed that he was very tall and that his head was shaved. But now, close up, I gulped, for I saw what I hadn't had time to see in the promo: His eyes were like Ping-Pong balls—totally white, with no pupils or irises.
Stammering, I said, "I—I've just come back from the catacombs. There
were
dead people there." Of
course there are dead people in the catacombs,
I mentally chided myself.
They know that. Stop blathering.
I said, "I—I've recovered the stolen treasure." I'd kept a handful from the bag I'd given to Penrod, and I placed this on the table to prove my story.
Uldemar sniffed. But when he spoke, his voice—though deep and elegant—was no longer intimidating. "So pleased to meet you," he said.
"Good to see—" I started, my mouth a full syllable ahead of me. How could I be so thoughtless as to bring up
seeing
to a person who was obviously blind? If somebody else had said it, I would have kicked her. I was tempted to kick myself. "I mean," I corrected myself) feeling my face go all hot and red—but his eyes
were
the most disgusting things I'd ever seen, and my stammer came back, "I—I—I—" which I realized sounded like "Eye, eye, eye." For something to do with my hands, which had developed a sudden tendency to flutter, I folded them and went to place them on the table in front of me.
Except that I banged the edge of the table, and when I jerked back, I knocked one of the gold coins onto the floor.
I leaned down to get it, but it was too fir under the table, so I pushed the bench back. Wood on stone made a loud screeching like fingernails on blackboard. Xenos leaped to his feet to get away from me, and Uldemar—who couldn't see what I was doing and had felt the bench beneath him move—grabbed for the stability of the table. The bench stopped so suddenly, I nearly slid off.
Again I reached under the table, this time smacking my forehead loudly against the wood. Before my eyes cleared, I accidentally latched onto Xenos's ankle—which was as hairy as his ears.
He shook me loose impatiently.
At last I located the coin, put it back on the pile, and folded my hands on the table in front of me, though at this point the bench was so far back I had to stretch to reach. But I figured I better leave well enough alone. I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself by touching the bump I could feel already swelling over my left eye.
Eye
reminded me of Uldemar.
He was still waiting, a pained look on his face.
"Hello," I said.
"Oh, I see what you mean, Kenric." Orielle giggled. "She
is
all that you said."
Well, excuse me. We can't all be naturally gorgeous, polished, and coordinated.
Abas gave a tittery laugh. He was carving his initials into the table with a dagger about the size of a small garden hoe. For all that I had chosen him to be my ally, I was aware that he could just as easily carve his initials into me.
Andreanna sighed. "Well now that
she's
here, I suppose we'd better ask her what she wants to do."
"About what?" I asked, sure I'd come in during the middle of something.
"About new drapes for the windows," Andreanna purred, then snapped, "
About the threats to the kingdom, of course, you absurd little ninny.
Have you been too busy twiddling your thumbs to be aware that the kingdom is in danger on several fronts?"
"No," I said. "I mean, yes. I mean, I
have
been busy, and I
have
been thinking about our problems. I just didn't know what particular problem you were discussing before I came in."
Stop trying to excuse yourself to them,
I told myself. "OK," I said, "what are our problems? First—"
Uldemar interrupted, "You smell of the dead."
"Yes," I said, "I know." I didn't point out that he'd told me so already. "First," I repeated, "the drawbridge."
"What are you talking about?" the queen demanded.
"The drawbridge—it keeps getting stuck on open."
The lovely Orielle said, "It worked when I came through this morning."
Xenos, biting off a centipede's head, grunted and nodded, Which I took to mean that he'd had no problem, either.
Abas said, "It worked fine when I went to let in Uldemar."
"It gets stuck," I insisted. "Ask the guards." I sounded pathetic, begging to be believed. "It got stuck when I came in at dawn, and again when I left a little bit later, and just now when I came back. It gets stuck, then it suddenly works again. Just like these doors."
"You mean the Great Hall doors, which worked perfectly well for the rest of us?" Kenric asked.
"You
saw,
" I protested. They couldn't deny seeing it, when the broken rubble Abas had generated still cluttered the way. "You saw that the doors wouldn't close."
"I did," Kenric agreed. "I'm just wondering why both the drawbridge and the Great Hall doors stick for you, and only for you."
Uldemar said, "She carries the dead with her."
"Enough already with the dead!" I yelled at him. (All right, all right, I yelled at a blind guy.) "I know I stink. I haven't had a chance to bathe yet. Surely you can put up with it while we discuss more urgent matters."
Uldemar said, "I didn't say that you stink. I said that I could smell the dead about you."
I paused to work this out. "You mean, like..."
"They must have followed you," Uldemar said. "From the catacombs."
So much for assuming I was the victim of an overactive imagination.
Sister Mary Ursula picked that moment to come climbing over the debris of the doors. "Ewww, dead people walking around, following live people. Have you been performing more of your necromancy, Uldemar?"
"Not me," Uldemar said. "Simply ghosts."
"I don't like ghosts," Sister Mary Ursula said. "They hang around watching you when you can't watch them, and they make rude comments. Everybody's fat from the perspective of someone who's been dead a hundred years."
Well, that put a whole new perspective on taking a bath.
Sounding put out, as though I'd invited the ghosts to follow me specifically to annoy her, Queen Andreanna asked, "How many are there?"
Uldemar leaned closer to me and sniffed. "Several hundred," he estimated.
"Are they dangerous?" I asked.
"If they're all standing on the drawbridge so that it can't be closed while we're under attack, yes," Uldemar said. "Mosdy they're annoying—howling at night, rattling chains so that it's impossible to get a good night's sleep. As Sister Mary Ursula pointed out, they do have a tendency to watch when people don't want to be watched, and to make rude remarks. The majority of the living can't hear them unless a whole bunch of ghosts are yelling together, but it isn't fun to know that people—even dead people—are sniggering at you."
As the queen of all sniggerees, I could empathize.
Kenric flashed that distracting smile of his at me. "They do seem to have developed a fondness for you," he pointed out. "If you stay away from the drawbridge so that they don't cluster on it, we should be fine." He gave just the slightest emphasis to his "we."
They
would be fine so long as the ghosts concentrated on harassing me.
"How do we get rid of them?" I asked.
Xenos made a noise halfway between snort and laugh. When he saw me look at him, he pulled his hood down farther over his face, and he jammed a centipede into his mouth to stifle the sound, but I could see his shoulders shaking with his silent glee.
I assumed this did not signify good news.
Uldemar said, "Understand, ghosts get bored. They don't sleep, they don't eat—day after day, year after year, sometimes century after century. If they've decided that it will be fun to haunt you—"
I squealed as a bony finger that I couldn't see jabbed me in the ribs.
Xenos shook with silent laughter.
Uldemar finished, "—it will be difficult to distract them."
Queen Andreanna said, "We don't have time for this nonsense."
"I once had to do battle with an undead ogre," Abas said, but before he could tell us the details, Sir Deming entered the room.
"What's she done now?" Deming demanded, making a big show of looking at the broken doors—as though I could have knocked them in.
"Ghosts," Orielle told him, and blew him a kiss.
Deming sat down next to her, where he could get a good look down the front of her dress. He said to me, "You didn't need to bring ghosts; I said you could bring the sheep with you if you got lonely."
Deming,
I thought,
would make a fine ghost.
"All right," I said. "Let's get the meeting started. Sister Mary Ursula, why don't you have a seat."
"Oooo, no," she said, shrinking back. "I could never sit down next to a wizard or a necromancer or a witch. They are not One with anybody or anything. They are like buttoning your coat and not noticing till you get to the bottom that you're one button off, or a hot ember that burns your skin, or a piece of doo-doo that you step in while you're wearing sandals."
Xenos pulled back his hood to make kissy-lips at her, and she shrank farther away.
"All right," I said, trying to regain control of the meeting, "we have to decide what to do about the barbarians."
"What about the barbarians?" Uldemar asked.
"I killed three of them," Abas said. "First—"
"Abas," I interrupted, "later." To the three magic-users, I explained, "The barbarians sent a raiding party into the courtyard, and Abas did kill three of them."
"Saving your life," Abas emphasized.
"Saving my life," I agreed. "Before the last one died, he said that one of the others had been their king, and that the reason they were attacking was because King Cynric had taken a crown made for their first chieftain, Brecc the Slayer."